


Emergency Protocol Lockdown

by audreyskdramablog



Series: Emergency Protocols [3]
Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Assassination Attempt(s), Blood, Blood and Injury, Canon-Typical Violence, Hurt Noctis Lucis Caelum, Injury, M/M, Major Character Injury, Pre-Canon, Unrequited Crush, action scenes are the worst, architecture is the second worst, with a bit of extra blood thrown in
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-13
Updated: 2019-02-04
Packaged: 2019-10-09 18:31:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 12,697
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17412032
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/audreyskdramablog/pseuds/audreyskdramablog
Summary: Noctis hits the marble hard enough it knocks the breath from him and sends a bright burst of pain through his skull and along his spine. His sword shatters back into crystal, a loss of control that Gladio would hold over his head for weeks if it happened in a training room. Before Noctis can get to his feet or call back his weapon, the tip of a sword bites into the hollow of his throat.Noctis breathes as shallowly as he can. Blood wells up around the steel and seeps down the sides of his neck. He stares up into his assassin’s smirking, flushed face and the only thought his adrenaline-fueled brain can grasp is the hope that Prompto made it out of the mall okay.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Starts during the middle of [Emergency Protocol Activated](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16298708). Would highly advise you go read that first, but I’m not your boss. Noctis and Prompto are both 19.
> 
> I blame [InkTail](https://archiveofourown.org/users/InkTail/pseuds/InkTail) for putting the idea of a Noctis POV into my head and [marmolita](https://archiveofourown.org/users/marmolita/pseuds/marmolita) for the ship tag.

The shot that echoes through the mall has Noctis throwing himself behind a nearby kiosk for cover even though neither of his current assassins aimed a gun in his direction. It takes a second for his brain to catch up to his adrenaline, and when it does, something too close to panic races up his spine. 

The shot came from the south end of the mall, somewhere below the fourth floor. From his current position, he can’t see much more than a slice of balconies and floors, and as much as he ought to care equally about all Crown citizens as the prince, the only person Noctis is worried about right now is Prompto. 

Prompto, shouting that more enemies were incoming. Prompto, screaming for him to head for higher ground. 

Noctis risks a glance across the mall’s open well, desperately searching for movement on the east side of the fourth floor. Prompto was running to the eastern escalators when Noctis warped up the western ones, and Noctis assumed Prompto was heading upward as well. But he only had a few moments, barely long enough to dig a potion out of the Armiger to heal the painful, bloody wound in his bad leg, before his two still-living assassins caught up with him. He doesn’t know if Prompto made it up here.

The kiosk doesn’t give him cover for more than a few racing heartbeats, and that’s not long enough to spot Prompto. Noctis catches an assassin’s shadowed reflection on the white marble flooring in time to duck and roll under the man’s sword. Wood splinters above and behind him, and Noctis throws his own sword  _ away _ , blindly warps after it, and stumbles his landing.

He’s not to stasis yet, but a void is sparking to life in his chest. It laps at his heart and his rib cage, and Noctis tries to push down the instinctive fear that comes with it.

Gladio makes him push himself to stasis every five or six weeks. It’s so Noctis knows when he is approaching his limits, so he knows what it feels like when he surpasses them, so he knows to seek shelter when his body is being consumed by nothing from the inside out. It’s so Gladio and Ignis can learn to keep track of his stamina as well, so they know when to cover for him, so they know when to help him hide, so they know when to put themselves at risk in order to give him an elixir.

They aren’t here. 

The man with the sword is relentless about closing whatever distance Noctis can put between them, and when Noctis  _ does _ create space, either with his sword or via warping, the man with the gun immediately has him diving for cover. If they weren’t trying to murder him, Noctis would admire their teamwork. As it is, Noctis is keenly aware of how quickly he’s rushing toward his limits and of the fact he blew off Ignis’s reminder last week to practice his magic by restocking his higher-level curatives and spell flasks. All he has in the Armiger are potions, and those won’t keep the void at bay.

He needs to end this fight, fast. He needs to end it and find Prompto. Time isn’t on his side anymore, not when he’s this close to stasis. Not when he doesn’t know who that gun was being fired at.

Noctis recovers his footing in time to parry a strike that would have run him through. He works hard to keep the man with the sword between him and the man with the gun in order to minimize openings. The man with the sword fights just as hard to force Noctis into more vulnerable positions and give his teammate a clear shot. 

One-on-one, Noctis knows he could take the man with the sword. He’s already killed two of the man’s teammates. He has much less experience against a long-range fighter, and that’s the problem. Even when he does train against Ignis, Ignis uses daggers, which travel much slower than bullets and are more easily blocked or dodged. The fact that the man has only managed to hit him once is as much a matter of luck as it is skill on Noctis’s part. If he couldn’t phase, he would be dead at least twice over. 

Phasing. 

Ignis probably would have thought of this strategy ages ago. Noctis has thought of it now, and he hopes that’s not too late. Between one swing of his blade and the next, he dismisses the Engine Blade and summons the greatsword Gladio’s been harping on him to use more. He’s not as skilled with one as Gladio is, isn’t nearly as confident with it as he is a regular sword, but that doesn’t matter. What matters is that he’s suddenly got an extra arm’s length of steel and his assassin is swearing and stumbling backward, off-balance and desperate to block.

Noctis presses his advantage, swapping between the two types of sword whenever there’s an opportunity to throw the man off. He abandons his attempts to injure his assassin and instead goes for crowding him, forcing him to retreat back toward the man with the gun. It means the man can’t get a clear line of sight to fire, and it means that Noctis can get much closer to the source of his troubles. 

Just as the man with the gun tries to sidestep them to get a clear and close-up view of Noctis, Noctis hurls himself forward and phases  _ through  _ the man with the sword. 

Phasing through an actual person instead of a brief flash of metal makes the void in Noctis’s chest spread more than he expected, but it also means when he slams back into corporeality, he’s got the man with the gun within striking distance. 

Noctis’s buries his sword in the man’s chest before the man can get his gun pointed back in the right direction. He yanks the weapon free, ignores the spray of blood that follows, and gets his sword around in time to block the incoming strike.

His last assassin’s face is twisted in rage now, and if Noctis weren’t fighting off the emptiness eating at his insides, he might feel triumph. But Noctis is hovering on the brink of stasis with that last, too-long phase. Without time to stop, to be still, without an elixir, his magic can’t replenish itself at anything more than a trickle. He’ll have to finish this fight without his magic.

For a few moments, it looks like he might. Then two more men in (false) Crownsguard black thunder up the western escalators and turn the tide against him. One is carrying a pair of daggers, the other has a gun, and they both throw themselves into the fight to kill him. 

Noctis is too busy dodging, parrying, to be able to look for the other two assassins who must be right on their heels.  _ Four incoming _ , Prompto shouted, and Noctis can’t spare a thought about where they might be or what positions they’re taking. It’s all he can do to stay on his feet and keep his sword up so the assassins in front of him don’t part his head from his shoulders. 

The man with the daggers is smaller and older than Noctis, but he’s fast and he’s vicious. He scores a long, bloody gash down Noctis’s right arm that burns more than any normal cut should and makes it difficult to grip his sword. 

_ Poison _ , Noctis thinks as the burn works its way down to his wrist and further up into his shoulder with every swing, and then he stops thinking about it because he can’t do anything about it even if he’s right.  It still weakens his grip and makes it difficult to keep his footing. He tries to compensate for both, nearly gets his sword knocked out of his hands, and suddenly a dagger is under his guard and angled to spill his guts.

Noctis phases out of the way. He gasps when the void in his chest expands so fast it slams into his ribs and echoes through his body. Noctis barely gets his weapon up to intercept the sword arcing down at him: he blocks, and then the man with the daggers slides in low and sweeps Noctis’s legs out from under him. 

Noctis hits the marble hard enough it knocks the breath from him and sends a bright burst of pain through his skull and along his spine. His sword shatters back into crystal, a loss of control that Gladio would hold over his head for weeks if it happened in a training room. Before Noctis can get to his feet or call back his weapon, the tip of a sword bites into the hollow of his throat. 

Noctis breathes as shallowly as he can. Blood wells up around the steel and seeps down the sides of his neck. He stares up into his assassin’s smirking, flushed face and the only thought his adrenaline-fueled brain can grasp is the hope that Prompto made it out of the mall okay.

And then a crossbow bolt blossoms in the center of his almost-murderer’s chest. 

Noctis clamps both hands around the sword as the man staggers so the motion doesn’t drive the sword further into his neck. The steel slices deep into his palms, so deep he swears he can feel the edges catch on bone, but the sword doesn’t plunge through his neck. Blood pours down his arms, and there’s a roaring in his ears that’s gunfire or shouting or something else entirely. A body hits the ground beside him.

Noctis throws the sword away; or tries, but his hands, his arms, are shaking so much that it doesn’t go far. He fumbles a potion from the Armiger— _ Six,  _ trying to hold the vial is an agony he hasn’t felt in years—and breaks it over his chest. The relief is immediate and not enough, not  _ nearly _ enough, but it gets him onto his side and then to his feet and away from the three fresh corpses around him.

Just in time for four strangers in Crownsguard black to rush toward him. 

Noctis calls for his sword even though the pain of holding it makes his hands burn where the potion wasn’t enough to completely heal them. He falls into a defensive two-handed stance, and for the first time since the fight started, he finds fury burning inside him instead of fear. 

One of the strangers, a woman with short, graying hair, throws up her hand in a silent signal to halt. They obey her, and when she signals again, they actually retreat a few steps to speak among themselves. Not far enough to matter, not when one of them has an actual crossbow in their hands and is obviously an expert with it, and it’s a gesture of goodwill that Noctis can’t bring himself to believe.

“Your Highness,” the woman starts, and she spreads her hands wide even though she does not put away her short sword. “You’re sa—”

“ _ Codes. _ ” It comes out more a snarl than anything, and later Noctis might be embarrassed by how feral it sounds. Blood drips from his half-healed hands onto the marble flooring. “What are the codes? Assassination attempt.”

She rattles it off, the one specifically for him and not his father, and Noctis so desperately wants this to be the real thing that he knows he can’t just trust his own judgment straight off. “Echo five?”

“Shelter in place,” she says. “Your Highness, we can—” This time she is the one to cut herself off. She cocks her head slightly to the side, but it isn’t until she pulls the earpiece off that he realizes someone must have been talking to her. “Your Shield’s on the line.”

She tosses it to him, an easy, underhanded throw, and Noctis catches it with his bloody left hand. He isn’t willing to put his sword down yet, so he ignores the tremble of his right hand as it takes all the weight and the pain when he grips the sword tighter to keep it from slipping. Noctis doesn’t bother trying to put the earpiece in, he just jams it against his ear and keeps a careful watch on the woman.

“Gladio?”

“Noct.” Even over the tinny speaker, there’s no mistaking Gladio’s voice and the tight relief in it. “I’m two minutes out. Less than that. You get somewhere safe and you  _ wait for me, _ understand?”

He’s not safe, not yet, but Gladio is almost here, and that’s enough for Noctis to dismiss his sword. The sudden loss of the weapon and his fury makes him dizzy. “Got it.”

He tosses the earpiece back to the woman; she catches it despite his terrible aim and then signals to her team. Two peel off into the nearby jewelry store to conduct a quick sweep. Belatedly, Noctis realizes this woman must be the team leader.

The team leader wipes Noctis's blood off her earpiece and approaches while her remaining teammate takes up a defensive position. “Sit, Your Highness. What curatives do you need besides a potion?”

Sitting—sounds really good. Noctis stays on his feet and thinks of the burning in his arm. “Antidote. An elixir, if you’ve got it.” He swallows, tries to sound calm. “I need to find my friend. His name’s Prompto Argentum, he was with me when this started.”

“We’ll do a sweep for civilians once you’re secure.”

Noctis grinds his teeth while the team leader puts her earpiece back in, sheathes her sword, and pulls out a hi-potion and an antidote, but he doesn’t argue with her. He and Gladio came to an agreement during Noctis’s high school years: Noctis can complain about security measures as much as he likes, so long as he complies with them when they’re in the middle of an  _ actual _ emergency, and in exchange Gladio has to listen to his complaints and not just shut him down. 

This mall (and being able to go to it without a team of Crownsguard) was one of their compromises. Noctis knows that the security here is under some kind of contract with the Crown to keep an eye out for potential whatevers, but a shit lot of good that did just now. 

He hopes there aren’t many casualties. The gunshot he can’t account for, the one that was on the wrong floor, bothers him. When the fight first broke out, the man with the gun had fired indiscriminately into the crowd after Prompto, but even if every one of those bullets missed, the panicked emptying of the mall means there’s a good chance someone got trampled or crushed or fell down the stairs or—

The team leader cracks the antidote over Noctis first, then the hi-potion, and the twin rush of healing magic makes him sway. She grabs his elbow to steady him and steers him to the jewelry store when one of her people shouts, “Clear!”

Maybe when Prompto shouted  _ go up, _ he meant all the way up. There are three more stories above this level he could have taken shelter in. 

“There are two more assassins that I didn’t see,” Noctis tells the team leader as she pushes him down behind the store counter. Prompto said four, but only two joined in at the end of the fight. 

(If all four had caught up to him—

Noctis thinks of the sword pressing into his throat and the limitations of phoenix downs, and then he stops thinking about it.)

The jewelry displays are thick glass, maybe even bulletproof based on the price tags of the items inside. Between the displays and the four (real) Crownsguard taking defensive positions, they form a barrier that ought to last until Gladio gets here. 

“The second team has two men in custody,” she says easily.

That was probably the shot he couldn’t account for. A knot of fear in his chest starts to work its way loose, and it feels like it makes way for his magic to start seeping back in. His heart’s still beating way too fast, but after the hi-potion and the antidote, he’s on steadier ground. Enough that he’s becoming aware of just how much blood he has on him: his own, and three, probably four, of his would-be murderers. He hasn’t had this much blood on him since—

Noctis scrubs his palms on his jeans. They’re ruined already; he’ll just tell Ignis not to bother trying to mend or get them clean. When his hands feel marginally better, he fumbles his phone out of his pocket so he can type out a quick  _ where are u _ message to Prompto. He puts the phone away again because he doesn’t want it confiscated immediately as a potential security threat if someone looks his way. It’ll get taken from him when he enters lockdown in the Citadel to be checked over for spyware, but until then he wants to keep it in case Prompto responds.

He hears a rush of footsteps and moves so he can peek out from behind the display, crouched and ready to summon his sword again, but the Crownsguard are saluting—and then Gladio and Cor are stepping inside the shop and looking somewhere on the spectrum between furious and grim. 

Noctis emerges from behind the counter. Gladio strides toward him immediately, looking him over with a quick, assessing gaze, undoubtedly noting all the bloodstains in his clothing and wondering how much damage is underneath. Cor hangs back to get information from the other Crownsguard.

“I’m fine,” Noctis says quickly. “Everything except my magic, but I’m not in stasis anymore.” He could manage a warp if he had to.

“Didn’t Ignis tell you to make some elixirs last week?”

“Yeah.”

But instead of immediately launching into the  _ Ignis doesn’t tell you to do things for shits and giggles  _ lecture, Gladio’s eyes are sweeping the rest of the store. Noctis’s stomach twists in a sudden rush of fear when Gladio asks, “Do you know where Prompto is?”

Noctis  _ knows _ that Gladio isn’t supposed to be asking questions like that right now. Gladio’s priorities are 1) protecting Noctis and 2) killing anything in this mall that might still want to kill Noctis. And it’s not like Noctis only comes to this mall when he’s with Prompto, so it’s weird if Gladio is assuming that Prompto is missing somehow.

But if Prompto remembered that he needed to run if someone ever tried to kill Noctis, then he probably also remembered that he needed to call Gladio after that.

“He was on the third floor, east side,” Noctis says. The words come out like he still has that sword against his throat. “Did he call you? Is he okay?”

“Shield Amicitia, take this team and escort His Highness to the Citadel.” Cor is interrupting and formal, and that’s all the non-answer Noctis needs to feel the first bite of panic. “We’ll search for Argentum.”

Noctis looks to Gladio, whose expression has gone hard, and then to the woman whose team saved him. He tries to rein in his emotions because he knows he’s going to get shut down immediately if anyone thinks he’s losing control. “He’s blond, about my size, dark blue jeans and a long-sleeved gray shirt.” He almost describes the jacket, but—no, neither of them had their jackets on when the fake Crownsguard forced them out of the café. They’re probably still sitting on the bench up there.

Recognition flickers across the team leader’s features and she glances toward Cor, as if she’s searching for a silent answer. An answer as to whether or not she should speak up and indirectly interfere with the order that Cor just gave.

That’s all the confirmation Noctis needs.  _ She saw Prompto. _ If she saw Prompto, that means he didn’t keep running up to safety on the fifth, sixth, or seventh floors. And Prompto can’t be on the fourth floor, or Noctis would have seen him or Prompto would have seen the fight end and come to check on him.

Prompto never made it up here.

Noctis summons a dagger from the Armiger, ignores how Gladio starts to say his name in warning, and hurls the dagger out of the store. He warps after it, hits stasis as he lands, and bolts for the western escalators before anyone can get their hands on him. Behind him, Gladio shouts at the Crownsguard to follow him. Noctis shoves that aside as thoroughly as he ignores the void that’s clawing at his rib cage after his warp. 

He’s tired after the fighting and the poisoning and the magical healing; he’s slower than he normally is after all the pain and the bloodloss. But fear and desperation keep him sprinting down the escalator and around the curve of the mall’s third floor.

He spots Prompto lying in a pool of his own blood near the southern escalators. 

A sound tears itself from his throat. It could be Prompto’s name, denial, a call for help—it doesn’t matter because  _ Prompto isn’t moving. _

Noctis nearly slips in the blood and crashes to his hands and knees next to Prompto. There’s blood all over Prompto’s back, but Noctis doesn’t try to make sense of that, he just rolls Prompto over. 

There’s blood on one side of Prompto’s face, in his hair, from where they were pressed against the floor; he’s gone horrifically pale beneath his freckles; his shirt is drenched and dark with blood because there is a gaping crater in the center of his chest. His eyes are half closed and his jaw has gone slack.

Noctis yanks a potion out of the Armiger and slams it into Prompto’s chest, beneath the gunshot wound. Terror lodges itself in his throat when the hole doesn’t start to close, when Prompto doesn’t gasp at the unfamiliar jolt of healing magic. Prompto is  _ so _ still, and he’s not—

Noctis grabs a second potion, his hand slick with blood, and breaks it over Prompto. He should have listened to Ignis, why the  _ fuck  _ didn’t he make new curatives, a potion isn’t enough, he needs—

He grabs a third potion, and someone grabs his wrist. He turns, ready to throw himself at whoever is stopping him, but it’s Gladio, and he’s saying something that Noctis can hear but can’t understand through the screaming in his mind. Noctis tries to yank his wrist free, but then the Crownsguard team leader is stepping past them both.

She kneels on Prompto’s other side and presses a phoenix down to his chest. The feather catches fire. Prompto arches under the phoenix down as magic courses through him and drags him back to life. 

Gladio lets go of Noctis’s wrist, and Noctis drops the third potion. It shatters uselessly on the floor, but he doesn’t care because  _ Prompto was dead _ and now he’s—

Now he’s gasping, and his eyelids are fluttering, and Noctis leans in over him as the team leader pulls away. The crater in his chest is gone.

It takes several seconds for Prompto to be able to focus his eyes, and when he’s finally able to focus on Noctis he reaches up. His hands are clumsy, unsteady, but he presses his bloody palms to Noctis’s chest and gives him a weak shove. 

Like he’s trying to push Noctis away, to safety.

Noctis grabs Prompto’s hands and holds them tight against his chest. “It’s over, Prompto.” His voice is surprisingly clear even though it feels like something inside him is starting to break free of its moorings, even though his throat feels raw. “I’m safe. You’re safe.”

Prompto blinks slowly. His head tilts to the side and focuses somewhere beyond Noctis’s shoulder for a moment, and then he’s looking back, relief plain in his expression. “Okay,” Prompto whispers. What little strength he had in his body slips away. “Okay,” Prompto whispers again, and then his eyes fall shut.

Noctis watches the slow rise and fall of Prompto’s chest until Gladio’s hand grips his shoulder. “Noct,” Gladio says, and Noctis hates how gentle, regretful he sounds. “We have to go. Now.”

Noctis carefully folds Prompto’s hands over his stomach and tries not to think about how dead that makes him look. He’s still breathing; the phoenix down made him whole again. 

“Did you know?” It’s not—it’s not what Noctis wants to say, exactly, but he’s trying hard to find something to latch onto so he doesn’t fall apart from the inside out. 

_ Prompto’s alive. _ He wasn’t, for a while, but he is now, and that means—it’s okay. As long as Prompto’s alive, it’s okay. 

It has to be.

Gladio doesn’t try to bullshit him. “Guessed. He was on the line with us when we heard gunfire close by. He didn’t respond to us afterwards. I hung up on him when we got word that Crownsguard had spotted you.”

Noctis pushes himself to his feet. His hands slide in Prompto’s blood, and his stomach churns as he remembers another pool of blood, another person he cared for who shouldn’t have been on the battlefield at all.

Noctis presses the back of his hand to his mouth and swallows hard, refusing to gag. Gladio pulls him away from Prompto and down the nearby set of escalators with the Crownsguard flanking them. Once Noctis has his stomach under control, he scrubs Prompto’s blood off his palms and onto his jeans. He doesn’t feel much cleaner for it, not when his jeans are tacky with blood already. He wishes Ignis were here, because Ignis would have a handkerchief on him.

The thought sparks something too close to laughter, and Noctis swallows that down, too. He feels like he’s balancing on a precipice. If he doesn’t keep everything tightly leashed underneath his skin, he’s going to tip over the side and shatter at the bottom. 

They eventually reach the first floor and sweep past Monica, who nods an acknowledgment their way in the middle of coordinating additional Crownsguard teams and emergency personnel. Once they get through her, they’re outside the mall and surrounded by an anxious, buzzing crowd made up of people who had been in the mall, reporters, people from surrounding buildings, more Crownsguard—the entirety of Insomnia, it seems.

It’s a dizzying swirl of noise and light. Noctis ducks his head and keeps his eyes trained on the ground, ignoring the sudden shouts and questions directed at him in favor of letting Gladio guide him to a waiting, armored van with tinted windows. He flinches at a sudden bright flash—camera—and climbs inside the van as quickly as he can manage. Gladio slides into the middle seat beside him, two of the Crownsguard take up the back seat, and the other two take the driver’s and passenger’s seats. The doors slam shut and it is suddenly quieter, darker, and then they’re moving.

A distant part of Noctis is grimly relieved that he’s going straight into lockdown so he won’t be tempted to look at what a mess he is on the evening news. From the passenger seat, the team leader quietly updates someone on their progress through the city and their ETA. 

Noctis—replays the last half hour in his head. It feels like so much longer than that, but a glance at the console up front and the little digital numbers says it’s only just that since he arrived at the mall. Their movie is supposed to be starting right now. Prompto was looking forward to it.

_ He _ was looking forward to it. Noctis knows it’s probably pathetic to miss high school, but at least then he got to see Prompto more often. Sometimes their Saturday movies are the only times he gets to see Prompto during the week now that he’s actually taking on more royal duties and learning how to prepare himself to rule. 

And on days Noctis has to cancel their Saturday movies, he thinks the only thing more pathetic than missing high school is still holding onto a crush from high school.

It was  _ nice _ to have Prompto sit beside him, for them to talk about things like normal friends do over their coffee, like Noctis wasn’t royalty. It was nice to feel Prompto against him, shoulders, arms, thighs touching in one of the last free spaces in the crowded café. And then the assassins—

“They knew Prompto’s name,” he blurts out. Fear bleeds into the edges of his voice, and he actually reaches out to grab Gladio’s arm, like that will somehow ensure Gladio listens to him. “When they came up to me, the assassins knew Prompto by name. They said he had to come with them, too.”

Gladio, to his credit, doesn’t question Noctis’s memory. His expression turns grim, and he leans forward to address the team leader in the passenger seat. “Relay that to Crownsguard Elshett. Argentum needs security until this mess is sorted out.”

“Yes, sir.”

But what are they even going to do with Prompto? It’s going to take him a while to regain consciousness after he—after the phoenix down. And it’s not like his parents are around to take charge of him until that happens. Monica might arrange to have him taken to a hospital for observation if no one claims him, but Noctis also knows that Prompto will freak out about the cost (or about Noctis offering to take care of the cost) if he wakes up there. The Citadel is out of the question when there’s a lockdown, even if Prompto had a basic security clearance, which he doesn’t.

“Where’s Ignis?” Noctis demands. He tries not to dig his nails into Gladio’s arm but mostly fails. “Has he reached the Citadel yet?”

Gladio grimaces, but he doesn’t pull away from Noctis. “He should’ve been notified about the assassination attempt by now per protocol, but he had today off, remember? If he’s not at the Citadel, I’m sure he’s on his way already.”

“Would you like me to check, Your Highness?” the team leader asks, but he doesn’t answer her.

Noctis lets go of Gladio’s arm so he can fish his phone out of his pocket. He turns away from Gladio, straining to be out of reach so his Shield can’t grab the phone from him, and hits Ignis’s number.

It rings twice, and then Ignis’s voice is on the other end of the line, strained and distant, like he’s using his hands-free device. Based on the background noise, it sounds like he’s driving. “Scientia speaking.”

“Specs,” Noctis says, and for some reason the nickname catches in his throat. “I’m okay, I’m with Gladio—” There are whole coded phrases he’s supposed to work into conversation to let people know whether or not he has been captured or believes his phone is compromised, but  _ fuck _ codes after everything that just happened. “We’re headed for the Citadel.”

Noctis can barely make out Ignis’s unsteady exhale on the other end. “Good. I’m on my way. What’s your ETA? I may be able to get there before—”

“Wait.” Noctis squeezes his eyes shut and knows he is asking for so much more than he ought. “Can you go to Prompto’s instead?”

Ignis is silent for one, two, three heartbeats. “Noct, if I don’t get to the Citadel before you do, I won’t be able to enter.”

The lockdown protocols are horrendously restrictive. Once the royal family is secure with their Shields,  _ no one  _ is allowed to enter or exit the Citadel gates. Ignis is one of the few people who are allowed to enter once the lockdown begins, but once those gates close for good, not even Ignis will be able to get through them until the lockdown is lifted. 

“The assassins knew Prompto’s name. They—he had to be revived.” Noctis hates how he loses control of his voice for a second, but he forces himself to keep going. “He needs—someone. Please, Iggy.”

“Let me talk to Gladio.” It’s sharp, but it isn’t a flat-out denial. 

Noctis turns back around and shoves his phone at Gladio, who is stony-faced but still takes the phone to start answering questions that Noctis can’t hear. “Of course not. About seven minutes. Dead or in custody, that we know of. The Marshal’s still on scene. The Citadel perimeter, most likely. No, I don’t. I’ve got him. Don’t need to tell me.” Then he hands the phone back to Noctis.

Noctis raises the phone to his ear. “Specs?”

“I won't make it in time,” Ignis says, and there’s a miserable note beneath his clipped words that digs deep into Noctis’s guts. “Once this is over, we are going to discuss, in detail, why you felt that was anywhere near an appropriate request to make of me in the first place.”

“But you’ll take care of him?”

“Since I will not be able to reach your side.”

Noctis shoves the sudden wave of guilt aside to deal with later. “Talk to Monica about security. Prompto’s—he’s going to need to be cleaned up.  _ Don’t _ take off his wristband, all right?” 

He remembers the absolute terror in Prompto’s eyes when he hooked a finger beneath the wristband, when he was trying to let Prompto know that something was wrong without tipping off anyone else. It was an absolutely shitty thing to do on top of being a mistake because it freaked Prompto out bad enough he bolted right into the assassins’ waiting arms.

“If he wakes up before the lockdown is over, tell him I’m sorry for what happened at the café, all right? I’m sorry for scaring him.”

“What happened?”

“I pulled on his wristband.” It sounds even worse when Noctis says it aloud. They  _ all _ know Prompto’s skittish about his wrist for reasons only known to him. It’s Noctis’s turn to sound miserable. “Look—just tell him I’m sorry, okay? And I want to talk to him when I can.”

“I’ll handle it.” There is another one, two, three heartbeats of silence. “Be safe, Noctis. Stay with Gladiolus until this is all over.”

“I will,” Noctis promises, and then he hangs up and hands Gladio his cell phone.

Gladio shuts the phone off and passes it to the team leader, who tucks it away so it can be examined by the intelligence division of the Crownsguard once they reach the Citadel. 

“All right, Noct,” Gladio says. One of his hands is clenched into a fist and resting on his knee, but he’s doing an impressive job of sounding calm. “Walk me through what happened. Don’t leave anything out.” 

Noctis gives himself a second to pull himself together, and then he starts, in halting, circling words, with trying to find a seat in the café while Prompto stood in line to place their coffee orders. He’s still explaining by the time the van pulls into the Citadel and the final gate is locked behind them.


	2. Chapter 2

Gladio hustles him out of the van, up the Citadel steps, and past the doorway bristling with a small army of Crownsguard and Kingsglaive. Noctis manages to keep himself from flinching when they swing the heavy doors shut behind him. The team of Crownsguard that accompanied him from the mall bar the doors, give Noctis their final salutes, take Gladio’s phone when he hands it over, and then hurry off, leaving just him and Gladio in the suddenly quiet and very empty entranceway. Noctis thinks he can hear their breathing echo off the high ceiling once the footsteps are gone.

“Even or odd,” Gladio says abruptly.

“Even.”

Gladio motions for Noctis to fall in step with him. Noctis does without protest even though he has to hurry to keep up with Gladio’s longer strides, and he says nothing when they get to a hallway and Gladio turns left.

There are layers upon layers of security within the Citadel when a lockdown is active. Secure the royal family. Secure any high-ranking nobility and diplomatic guests. Kick out all civilians. Kick out anyone below a certain security clearance level. Station guards on the walls. Station guards on the doors. Station guards at all strategically significant areas.

And pick one of the lockdown rooms at random.

The four towers of the Citadel are divided between Noctis and his father in a lockdown, a secret decision made by them and their Shields. They’re not allowed to be in the same tower during a lockdown for fear the lucky placement of a bomb or similar weapon could kill them both. Right now, Noctis has the northern and the western towers, and apparently his choice of _even_ means _north_ today with how Gladio plows straight through the western tower and doesn’t stop until he reaches a secured, private elevator in the northern tower. “Even or odd.”

“Even.”

Gladio keys in his access code, steps inside, slides his hand across the button for every floor, and steps back out. The elevator doors close, and he and Noctis head for the stairwell instead.

There are three rooms in each tower that can be used for lockdown. Each of them, plus an additional three decoy rooms, will have a team of Crownsguard or Kingsglaive stationed inside. All teams will stay in their assigned rooms until the lockdown is lifted or violence forces them out.

When they reach the fifth flight of stairs, Gladio says, “Red, yellow, or blue.”

Noctis thinks of blood and Prompto’s hair and answers, “Blue.”

Gladio calls a halt at the ninth floor landing. He opens the door just enough to peer through, and once he’s satisfied that an ambush isn’t waiting on the other side, he leads them out onto the floor. From there they quickly—and quietly—make their way through the abandoned floor. This section of the Citadel is devoted to the royal archives and library, and it only takes a few minutes for Gladio to lead him to a nondescript wooden door with a worn brass handle.

It looks like it ought to lead to a supply closet or a small meeting room. Noctis nudges the handle with his fingertips—it is just as falsely rickety as he remembers, like one good kick would break the lock—while Gladio nudges aside a memorial plaque for some long-dead royal archivist to reveal a keypad. He keys in his code and slides the plaque back into place. Noctis feels more than hears the door unlock.

He still steps back and allows Gladio to open the door as protocol says he should. He can’t see much of the room past Gladio’s bulk, but he hears the familiar staccato of fists to chests, and then Gladio is pulling him inside.

The murmurs of _Your Highness_ are muffled by Gladio shutting and bolting the door behind them. There are four Crownsguard here: two men, two women, all in their uniforms. Noctis tells himself that Gladio will be more than happy to work off bottled-up frustration by murdering them if they do anything the least bit sketchy. It doesn’t keep Noctis from digging his nails into his palms, but it does help him keep his expression mostly blank.

The lockdown room isn’t all that big, not when there are six people inside it. It’s smaller than his apartment. There are two doors set in the back wall; one leads to a bathroom and the other to a sleeping area based on what he remembers from the last refresh he had of the lockdown rooms. Along the right wall are a handful of cupboards, two burners (no oven), a sink, and a clock. There’s a cramped dining set in the middle, and along the left wall are a series of computers, monitors, microphones, keyboards, and other security-related equipment. It’s decent enough for a last-ditch holdout.

One of the men and one of the women sweep past Noctis so they can flank the barred door. Gladio steps in front of the other woman, who has dark brown hair, braided and pinned into a knot at the back of her head. She is older than him, probably her thirties, and while she is taller than Noctis, she’s nowhere near as tall as Gladio. “Crownsguard Decia, report.”

Gladio knows her well enough that he’s addressing her first like she’s the team leader, and that helps Noctis feel—more secure. Gladio _knows_ her name, expects her to answer, isn’t standing defensively between her and Noctis. She is someone he can trust, for the moment, in this room.

Noctis tries to relax his hands, with limited success. It’s harder to ignore the itch between his shoulder blades from having two armed strangers behind him, but his magic is coming back, and he knows he could phase if he needed to. Give him twenty minutes to sit and breathe, and he’ll be back to normal.

Maybe forty.

“Evacuation of non-essential personnel from the Citadel is complete, and His Majesty has been secured according to official notifications. No attempts to harm His Majesty have been reported. We have not received any notices of attempted security breaches.” She glances at Noctis and then back to Gladio. “We completed a survey of the room’s supplies, and everything is accounted for, should His Highness require anything.”

Noctis is suddenly aware, again, of just how awful he must look, of just how sticky his clothes are. He opens his mouth to say he’s fine, but what comes out is, “Where are the curatives?”

“The drawer to the right of the sink.”

Noctis mutters _thanks_ and heads for the miniature kitchen. He opens the drawer all the way so he can take quick stock of everything inside and tunes out Gladio and Decia while they talk about reporting to Crownsguard headquarters that Noctis is secure.

There are neat rows of potions, hi-potions, ethers, and elixirs in the drawer, but it’s the small stack of phoenix downs at the very front that catch his eye. Noctis stares at them for a long moment, and then he grabs one of the phoenix downs and one of the elixirs and tucks them away in the Armiger. He closes the drawer carefully and turns back around.

Decia is in front of a microphone, telling whoever is on the other end that Noctis is safe. Gladio is watching Noctis, arms folded, and Noctis looks away first. Shame lodges itself in his gut and makes space for anger beside it.

He should have had both of those on him this morning. If he’d had that elixir, he wouldn’t have run out of magic during the fight. He might have been able to take down all of those assassins on his own. He might have been able to do it before they—

“You’re a mess,” Gladio says. His tone is blunt, not teasing like it usually is when he says that after a hard training session. “Get a shower. I’ll find you something to wear that doesn’t have holes in it.”

* * *

The bathroom behind the left door is a small, cramped thing, barely big enough for a shower stall, toilet, and sink. The shelving over the toilet is filled with a small stack of towels and spare rolls of toilet paper. This shower is wedged into the corner and has more in common with a shower stall in his high school locker room than it does the shower Noctis has in his apartment, and the soap and shampoo are much the same. It’s utilitarian in every respect.

Noctis sits on the closed toilet lid and unlaces his boots. He grimaces when he gets them off and realizes just how much blood ran down his injured leg to soak his sock and puddle in his shoe. It takes a few moments of examining the sole before he is satisfied that he didn’t leave a trail of bloody footprints behind him and straight to the lockdown room. He adds the boots to the list of things he never wants to see again and then stands to peel off the rest of his ruined clothing. He lumps them all in a tacky, bloody heap by the door and hurries for the shower.

It takes a minute for the water to get hot, even with the handle cranked all the way to the highest setting. Once it’s warm enough, Noctis closes his eyes and steps into the stream of water, bowing his head under the spray. He tries to focus on the heat and the feel of the water pouring over him. Every time his mind tries to wander out of the shower stall, he yanks it back into his skull.

Don’t think about Prompto, terrified of the wrong person in the café and oblivious to the gun aimed at his back. Don’t think of him still and slack-jawed on the floor of the mall. Don’t think of the fact that he could have died permanently if that Crownsguard hadn’t had a phoenix down on her. Don’t think of what his blood looks like as it washes red-pink down the drain.

Noctis presses the heels of his palms into his eyes and refuses to look. Prompto’s alive. _Noctis_ is alive. No one tried to kill his dad. The only ones who are dead are the ones who deserve to be.

The water temperature edges higher, but Noctis doesn’t turn down the heat because it’s easier not to let his mind wander when an increasing portion of it is dedicated to how uncomfortable he is right now. His skin prickles with the heat.

A knock at the door startles him. Noctis breathes in sharply, chokes on some too-hot water, and ducks out from under the spray. He gropes for the handle to turn the water and heat down, and when he opens his eyes, the air is thick with steam.

“I’m coming in.” Gladio’s voice is muffled but unmistakable through the door, and he opens it without giving Noctis a chance to refuse. “Shit, Noct, it’s a sauna in here. At least turn on the fan.”

“What do you want?”

“Clothes are next to the sink.”

Right. Noctis runs a hand over his face. “Thanks.”

If Gladio says anything back, it’s lost when the fan starts up and the door closes. Noctis listens to the hum of the fan for several heartbeats and then risks a glance down at his feet.

The blood is mostly gone, from what he can tell, though his skin is flushed from the uncomfortably hot water. He grabs a washcloth and the soap and scrubs himself down until his whole body aches.

By the time he is toweled off and dressed in clean clothes (sweatpants and a t-shirt that are a little too big for him, plus a pair of slippers), Noctis is exhausted. His body is, at least. His mind feels like it has a constant white-noise buzz going on in the background, even after he shuts off the fan.

Gladio must have taken his ruined clothes because all that’s left are a few smears of blood on the tile. Noctis crumples up his towel and drops it over the blood to hide it from view. Ignis would have sighed at him and said something about _regressing_ , but Ignis isn’t here because—

Noctis wrenches open the bathroom door and steps out into the main room. Five pairs of eyes are immediately aimed his way, but Gladio’s the only one still looking at him when he steps up to the security equipment. The monitors are on, and most of them are running live video feeds of the surrounding areas, which are largely empty. He doubts there was much screaming when the Citadel got emptied out, unlike the mall.

“Can we get the security footage from the mall?” Noctis asks. He wants to see what happened to Prompto. He doesn’t understand how Prompto could have gotten k—shot.

Why would anyone even _want_ to target Prompto? Once he was out of Noctis’s immediate vicinity, once the assassins’ cover was blown, there wasn’t any reason for anyone to go after him. Noctis didn’t get to see much of Prompto during the fight, but Prompto _ran_ , and that was supposed to protect him.

That was the whole _fucking point_ to keep him safe, but obviously that hadn’t worked.

At some point while Noctis was showering, Decia dragged a chair from the table over to the monitors so she could be comfortable while keeping an eye on the various video feeds. She stays focused on them even when she answers, “That may take some time, Highness. According to the most recent reports from Crownsguard Elshett, the mall’s CCTV system was trashed after the team on duty was killed, likely prior to the assassins making contact with you. They could not be revived.”

She says it matter-of-factly, but the guilt hits hard enough that Noctis’s stomach roils. He remembers thinking shit about mall security shortly after being rescued. They weren’t incompetent; they were _dead_. Purposefully killed so that they couldn’t notify the Crown when everything went to hell.

They’d been murdered as a stepping stone to get to _him._

“Any other casualties?” Noctis barely recognizes his own voice. It sounds distant, echo-y in his ears.

“No final count. Unofficially, one other permanent civilian death and nine injured.”

“Fuck,” he says. _“Fuck.”_

No one disagrees with him.

Gladio grabs his arm and manhandles him into a seat. Noctis plants his elbows on the table and presses the heels of his hands into his eyes again while he tries to breathe. His stomach feels like it’s trying to claw its way up his throat to spew his guilt for everyone to see. He was so focused on Prompto’s well-being that he didn’t spend more than a few seconds thinking about the fact that other people could have died. That they _did_ die.

What kind of shitty prince is he?

Gladio moves the hand on his arm to his shoulder, but it is more a condemning weight than it is a comfort, and Noctis doesn’t try to shrug it off. The Crownsguard are too professional to acknowledge their prince trying not to fall apart at the table.

After a while, Gladio’s hand disappears. Noctis listens to his footsteps, the open and close of cupboard doors, a sudden splash of water. A few seconds after the water cuts off and there’s a clank of glass on wood.

“Drink,” Gladio says. His voice is not gentle. “I’m not hauling you to a bunk if you pass out.”

Noctis briefly considers flipping Gladio off. He grabs the glass of water instead and drinks.

* * *

If Noctis thought he could get his mind to settle, he might have followed Gladio’s pointed hint that he could lie down and take a nap. But as often as he has stress napped in the past, he knows there’s no way he’s going to be able to fall asleep right now. Not when his brain keeps circling back to the fight, dissecting all the ways it went wrong, how it could have gone even worse. Not when his brain is more than happy to replay those seconds he tried to heal Prompto and couldn’t do a godsdamned thing.

If there were more space, he’s desperate enough for a distraction he might have asked Gladio to put him through his paces on grappling. But there’s not even enough room to pace, let alone train. And besides, the couple minutes he did make a circuit through the cramped room, everyone but Decia kept tracking his movements, and that made _him_ want to warp through the door to escape.

So Noctis sits at a table, staring off into the distance, jerking to attention whenever the crackle of the intercom provides them with updates. They’re mostly security notices from Dustin Ackers—patrols checking in, that sort of thing. He tries to keep a mental map of where all the teams are patrolling, but the Citadel is too complicated, there are too many moving parts, and his thoughts keep getting dragged back to the mall.

It’s practically silent, otherwise. Gladio eventually sits at the table, positioned so he’s between Noctis and the main door. The two Crownsguard flanking the entrance are practically statues. Decia keeps her focus on the security feeds, and the fourth member of their team holds up the wall between the bathroom and bedroom doors. They’re all stuck in a holding pattern, waiting to be told it’s safe or for violence to reach into their hiding spot and yank them out.

* * *

Roughly an hour-and-a-half into the lockdown, Dustin’s voice comes in over the comm with the official civilian casualty count: six dead, one revived, and seventeen injured.

Twenty-four people hurt or worse because they just happened to be in the same building as Crown Prince Noctis Lucis Caelum.

* * *

Around three hours into the lockdown, Crownsguard Decia says, “Modius, start the shift change.”

The man standing between the bathroom and the bedroom doors pushes off the wall and heads for the kitchen. Noctis watches the man rummage through the cupboards, pulling out water bottles and a selection of packaged snacks into a pile on the counter.

Noctis wonders just how long this team was on shift when the lockdown started. He knows that there are varying shifts for the Crownsguard, and if he remembers right, these people may have already been on duty for five or six hours before everything went to hell. Their comfort hadn’t even crossed his mind.

Just add it to the list of things to feel guilty about today.

Modius eyes the pile critically and then grabs two water bottles and a handful of the snacks before depositing them on the table between Noctis and Gladio. Noctis is surprised by the gesture but manages to get out a _thanks_ before the man disappears into the bathroom. He’ll take the water, but Noctis isn’t sure he can stomach actually eating anything right now.

Gladio rips open a protein bar. It’s gone in three efficient bites. “Still not hauling you to a bunk,” Gladio says, and he shoves a package of chips closer to Noctis. “You pass out, you’re sleeping on the floor.”

“Shut up,” Noctis tells him, but he takes the chips anyway.

* * *

Just after four hours into the lockdown, the intercom crackles to life. “Crownsguard Elshett’s team has recovered the majority of the video footage,” Dustin says. “The intelligence division will begin combing through it in order to piece together a timeline and verify whether or not there were additional actors in this incident.”

Noctis is out of his seat and at the microphone before Dustin can finish speaking. “I want the footage from the third floor.”

“And I want the footage of His Highness’s fight,” Gladio says, right behind him.

“We’re already preparing footage of the fight for His Majesty. We’ll have it to you shortly. Your Highness, is there anything specific you want from the third floor, or do you want it all?”

Noctis wants to tell Dustin not to give his dad the footage, but that would be a waste of breath. The last thing he wants is for his dad to feel the kind of guilt that’s sitting in his guts like icy lead. And he knows his dad. He knows that his dad has always been concerned about his desire to live outside the Citadel, to have looser security restrictions, but his dad still approved them. Regis will think that what happened today is at least partly his fault for approving the compromise that Noctis and Gladio made about the mall.

And Noctis doesn’t—he doesn’t want his dad to see him getting overwhelmed and knocked to the floor. He doesn’t want his dad to see him helpless with a sword at his throat, seconds away from dying. He doesn’t _ever_ want his dad to see that.

“I want the footage of my friend,” Noctis finally answers. He swallows hard so his voice is steady. “It might be easier to backtrack to find him. He was shot on the third floor, near the southern escalators.”

* * *

The footage of Noctis’s fight plays out over the monitors. Gladio is standing right in front of the screen, arms crossed and focused on what he’s seeing. He keeps his thoughts to himself, but the way his jaw clenches or his breath comes out too sharply means that he is not thrilled by what he’s seeing.

Noctis isn’t, either. It’s weird to see himself from security angles—usually when there’s footage of him, it’s on the news at some kind of official event—but it’s easy enough to tell that he’s partially distracted. At the beginning, some of it is excusable since he was trying to keep the assassins away from civilians, but once the floor is empty of everyone but him, the assassins, and Prompto, it’s clear that he’s not entirely focused on his own survival.

And in hindsight, it’s a little embarrassing to see himself summon a sword on the Crownsguard who rescued him.

“Noct,” Gladio says, and his voice is dangerously low.

“I know. I just—yell at me later, okay? Not now.” Not when they’re trapped in a room with four strangers and Gladio’s temper is running hot.

A grunt is all Noctis gets in reply, but Gladio doesn’t lecture him. Gladio just replays the footage, undoubtedly taking note of everything that Noctis did wrong so Gladio can drill him on it in training later.

Nearly five hours into the lockdown, Dustin sends over Prompto’s footage. Noctis thanks Dustin and queues it up. Gladio abandons the footage of Noctis so he can lean in over Noctis’s shoulder to watch.

Even though Noctis knows exactly how the fight began, it’s still painful to watch Prompto throw himself off the escalator. He disappears for a second beneath and behind some startled people—did he botch the landing? it isn’t like Prompto knows how to take a fall from that height—but then he’s back on his feet and running, weaving and darting between people and around kiosks.

It’s like the mall explodes. Everyone else is desperate, scrambling away from the danger. Noctis tries to ignore the frantic motions and focus on a patch of blond hair as it rushes away from the camera. Someone just behind Prompto drops, and Prompto—inexplicably—staggers. It’s almost like he tripped, or someone shoved him, but from what Noctis can see, no one was close enough to touch him. Did he trip himself up?

Gladio sucks in a breath, not quite a hiss, and Noctis reorients himself when the footage switches to the inside of the store. Prompto knocks some pots and pans off a display when he catches himself on it, and then he’s stumbling his way back through the store until he’s near a wall. He ducks out of the security camera’s view.  

There’s no movement in the store for what seems like an eternity. Eventually, Noctis spots Prompto hurrying down the aisle in a crouch, headed toward the storefront. He has his phone pressed to his ear, and there is a weird dark patch on the back of his shirt. For a split second, Noctis doesn’t understand.

Then the camera feed switches back to the original view, and Noctis sees the person who fell still on the ground, now accented with a growing pool of blood. Horror jolts through Noctis like lightning when all the pieces fall into place.

Prompto had been shot. Prompto had been _shot,_ and he still remembered to call Gladio.

The camera is too distant to capture the nuances of Prompto’s expression, but it’s obvious to Noctis that he has to force himself to look away from the body that could have been his.

Noctis remembers the casualty count; the person on the floor is likely unrevivable.

Prompto stays crouched, half hidden behind the display for several moments. Based on the way he’s holding his arm, he’s either listening or talking to Gladio on the other end. And then he’s moving, darting from one form of cover to another, like he’s the hero of one of the stealth games he likes to play.

The camera view switches, and Prompto stops not long after, likely because Noctis can see part of the fight along the opposite edge of the frame. He’s probably telling Gladio what’s going on, like some kind of sports announcer, but he’s still far enough away that Noctis didn’t even know he had been there.

Something pulls Prompto’s attention from the fight and toward the glass railing. He’s focused on—something below?—the second team of assassins arriving, Noctis realizes. That’s how he knew four more enemies had shown up. Prompto puts his phone away and brings his hands back up to cup around his mouth, and Noctis remembers how surprised he’d been by Prompto shouting a warning to him.

Prompto sprints away. The footage cuts to a different camera, just in time for Prompto to almost slam himself into the—north, it must be north—escalators. Then he’s pushing off again and hauling over a—table? Why?

Prompto is barricading the escalators. He didn’t keep running like he was supposed to; he tried to _help._

An awful premonition sinks through Noctis as the Prompto on screen hesitates. Prompto brings his hands up again, this time to scream _go up_.

Noctis can’t see himself from this angle, but he remembers following the instruction. He assumed that Prompto would be climbing back up to the fourth floor, too.

But Prompto doesn’t. He sprints away from the northern escalators and straight past the eastern ones. He never meant to head up to safety. He meant to buy Noctis time.

Noctis watches the scene at the southern escalators play out from a distance, sick with guilt and something darker. Prompto grabs a chair and hurls it down the escalator, out of view. He swings back around to grab two more. One misses, but the other knocks a man off his feet. Another man appears in frame to aim a gun, and Prompto falls.

The two assassins don’t spare Prompto or their downed partner a second glance. Blood spreads across the floor, but Prompto is still moving. His hand slides across the marble and through blood, like he’s trying to find purchase to push himself up. His legs twitch, like he’s trying to curl up or get his feet under him—

Gladio tries to pull Noctis away from the monitor, but Noctis grips the counter to keep himself in place. He resists until the Prompto on the video feed stops moving.

Until he dies.

And then Noctis lets Gladio pull him away.

This time Gladio bypasses the table. He opens the door to the bedroom and hauls Noctis in behind him. The room is small, with two sets of barracks-style bunk beds and a dresser in between that probably has more spare clothes in it. Gladio kicks the door shut, pushes Noctis down onto the nearest bed, and pulls Noctis’s slippers off.

Noctis is distantly aware of how fast he’s breathing, but he’s more focused on the guilt that is knifing its way through his guts. Prompto got shot. Twice. He _died._

Because he wanted to help Noctis.

Gladio crouches down at the side of the bed, and Noctis rolls onto his side so his back is to Gladio. He works on slowing his breathing. He doesn’t want to see the scar on Gladio’s face and be reminded that this is the second time a friend was hurt protecting him.

 _First one earned,_ Gladio said. He was _proud_ to wear that scar. It was proof of his ability as a Shield and of his loyalty. And after that initial shock wore off, Noctis was proud of him, too. Grateful, even, for this always visible proof that Gladio wouldn’t resent his service to Noctis even if he got frustrated when Noctis didn’t live up to expectations.

“Noct.” For the first time today, Gladio sounds—not soft, exactly. Not quite gentle. Tired, maybe. Resigned. Though what to, Noctis isn’t sure. “Prompto will be okay. Iggy’ll take care of him.”

Noctis bites down the urge to snap that nothing about what happened today was okay. He curls up and hates how childish he feels for it. But he’s about two seconds from shouting or crying or exploding and _gods,_ all he wants is for none of this to have happened. “Prompto said he would run away.” Noctis hates how uneven his voice sounds.

Prompto promised that, before Noctis gave him the wristband back in high school. He promised, but in the end he hadn’t. And then he got murdered because he wouldn’t.

In the silence that follows, Noctis hears Gladio shift. After a while, Gladio takes in a deep breath. “We asked Prompto if there was anything he could do to stop the assassins from getting to you.”

“You did _what?”_ Noctis shoves himself upright and barely keeps from braining himself on the underside of the upper bunk. He turns to stare down at Gladio, who is now cross-legged on the floor.

Gladio’s hands are pressed flat on his knees and his jaw is set like he’s bracing for a fight. “We didn’t think anyone would arrive before the rest of the assassins reached you.”

Noctis _hates_ how calm and reasonable Gladio sounds. The urge to cry is gone, so all that’s left is shouting or exploding. Noctis is on the brink of both. “He’d been shot!”

“He didn’t tell us,” Gladio counters, and then, infuriatingly, he adds, “We still would have asked him.”

“What the hell were you thinking?”

Gladio lifts his chin slightly, as if he’s daring Noctis to keep going. “Monica couldn’t reach security. The closest Crownsguard teams were still minutes out. Prompto said you were wounded after killing two of the assassins, and four more assassins were on their way up.”

“I was handling it!”

“You would have died,” Gladio says, and Noctis feels a sick surge of victory when Gladio’s composure cracks. His voice goes low and rough. “I saw the footage, Noct. You were seconds away from getting your godsdamned head cut off.”

“And whose fault is that?”

The question comes out too quickly for Noctis to call it back. To Noctis’s horror, Gladio actually flinches, but he doesn’t look away. “Mine, and the rest of the Crownsguard.”

That’s not the answer that Noctis wanted. It’s not an answer that will keep the fight going, that will let him burn away the guilt that’s threatening to drown him. He expected Gladio to point out all of his failures, all of the ways he’d fucked up by being distracted or not being prepared. He expected Gladio to finally join him in picking himself apart.

Gladio stands up before Noctis can find his voice. His expression has smoothed out into the one he wears for public events: calm, stonily blank, silently assessing. “The only one who didn’t let you down today was Prompto. So when this is all over, don’t hold it against him for doing my fucking job.”

Gladio walks out of the bedroom. Noctis does not follow.

* * *

It’s harder to keep track of time after that. There aren’t any clocks in this room, and Noctis can only hear the occasional murmurs of voices from the other side of the door or the sound of water running through the pipes. He can’t sleep, either, which is his usual go-to for when he wants to just—skip time.

The terror in Prompto’s expression when Noctis pulled on his wristband. The misery in Ignis’s voice when Noctis asked him not to come to the Citadel. The way Gladio flinched when Noctis threw that accusation in his face.

Forget what kind of prince he is—what kind of _friend_ is he? To do that all in the same day? Fuck, in the same afternoon?

Noctis squeezes his eyes shut and desperately wishes he could sleep.

* * *

Two sharp knocks at the door. Noctis leverages himself upright as the door opens, and Gladio steps inside. He’s still wearing his official face, which means that any apology would either not be welcomed or not be believed. The words die in Noctis’s throat.

“The lockdown has been lifted,” Gladio tells him. “The security level is still high, but you’ll be escorted to your suite in the Citadel. Expect to spend the next few days here instead of your apartment.”

Noctis scrubs a hand over his face. “Got it. My dad?”

“His Majesty is headed to your suite.”

The _to check up on you_ goes unsaid. Noctis doesn’t want his dad to make a fuss over him, but he won’t protest it. He did the same thing when the last plot to assassinate his dad was uncovered.

(And Regis has more reason to worry, anyway. This is the second time Noctis’s assassins have almost won, and he’s not even twenty.)

“Right.” Noctis slides off the bed and puts his slippers back on. “What about my phone?”

“Your suite. The intelligence division said it was clean.”

That’s one less thing to worry about, but there are still a lot of questions left unanswered. “Have they figured out who was behind all this?”

“None of the assassins had identification on them, and the two survivors haven’t divulged much yet. The intelligence division is working on figuring out who they are. They have a suspect for who leaked the outdated codes: Otho Sestius. He fled Insomnia within the hour of the attack. Kingsglaive have been sent in pursuit.”

* * *

Gladio and the Crownsguard team escort Noctis back to his suite in professional silence. He doesn’t use the suite often since he moved out, but sometimes it’s more convenient to stay a night at the Citadel than it is to travel back and forth. He keeps a small collection of belongings there: spare clothes, toiletries, that sort of thing. Noctis is pretty sure he still has a small collection of junk food hidden there for when formal dinners have more vegetables than they ought to. After so many hours locked in, there’s a quiet but persistent ache in his stomach that isn’t guilt, and the last thing he wants to do is create more inconvenience than he already has. The kitchen staff was undoubtedly sent home when the lockdown started.

They turn the corner to Noctis’s suite, and the hall is full: King Regis, Clarus Amicitia, and two teams of Kingsglaive. At some point during the lockdown, Regis lost most of his royal regalia. He is down to a button-up shirt, slacks, knee brace, and cane. He looks—smaller. Vulnerable. Less like a king and more like a person.

“Noctis,” Regis says, and then he’s moving as quickly as he can, and Noctis surges forward to meet him.

Any other time he’d be embarrassed to have his dad pull him into a hug in front of a crowd, but Noctis doesn’t care. He can’t care, not when Regis’s cane clatters to the floor and Noctis finds himself caught in both arms.

Noctis’s throat burns. He holds his dad back tightly, half to give him the support Regis doesn’t have without the cane and half to reassure them both. The desperation and warmth in the gesture has him hiding his face against his dad’s shoulder, like he’s a child again and watching a country burn. “I’m fine, Dad. I’m okay.”

But Noctis still doesn’t try to pull away, not until Regis loosens his grip. Clarus is there in a heartbeat to hand the king his cane. The vulnerability begins to melt away.

Regis looks Noctis up and down, as if reassuring himself that Noctis is still in one piece. His throat works for a moment before he says, “I know you’ve had a long day. I should let you rest. Join me for breakfast tomorrow?”

It has been weeks since they last shared a private meal, Noctis realizes with a fresh dose of guilt. “Yeah. So long as it’s not too early.”

“Seven?”

“Dad.”

“Eight, then.” A faint smile tugs at Regis’s mouth. “All right. Ten?”

“I can do that.”

Regis reaches out to grip Noctis’s shoulder. “Do you need anything tonight?”

“No, I’m good. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Sleep well,” Regis says, and he lets go of Noctis’s shoulder after a final squeeze. “I’ll see you in the morning.”

* * *

Noctis finds his phone set neatly on his bedside table, plugged in and ready for him. He unlocks his phone and sees several text notifications, most of them from Prompto and a few from Ignis. Noctis stares at the little red number over the messaging app for several seconds until he steels himself to open them.

The last message Noctis sent said _where are u,_ and Prompto decided to have a little fun answering the question once he was awake again.

The first is a selfie of him and Ignis, Prompto beaming and Ignis looking exasperated. Underneath, Prompto wrote, _just hanging out with Iggy_ and tacked on an annoyed emoji and one wearing glasses. It’s a cute picture, so Noctis saves it.

A few hours later, there’s a picture of a plateful of green curry and _eating the best food ever! its all mine!!!_ with half a dozen hearts and smiley faces tacked on.

Not long after, there’s another picture of Prompto, with his hand pressed to his stomach and an over-the-top grimace on his face. The text reads _in bed ate too much never leaving again_ and has a green-faced emoji at the end. Noctis saves that one, too.

Then, just half an hour ago, there’s a shot of Ignis in profile, sitting in a computer chair. His notebook is out and he’s frowning at it. His hair is falling out of its usual style, his glasses are slipping down his nose, and the top two buttons of his shirt are undone. Noctis knows Prompto is feeling off-kilter because the next text has capital letters and proper punctuation. _Maybe having a sleepover? I asked Iggy if he wanted my bed and he glared at me. Maybe I’m the only one that’s supposed to sleep?_

Something in Noctis relaxes with every picture, every text. It’s not enough—not nearly enough—to wash away his guilt, but he is relieved that Prompto still wants to text him after everything. That Prompto is sending him silly pictures and silly texts and doesn’t seem upset about having Ignis and whatever other security Monica arranged for him invading his home.

Noctis remembers how worried he was to talk to Prompto about what kind of danger he could be in if they kept being friends and if Prompto accepted and wore a royal favor. Part of him was terrified to bring it up, in case Prompto did the smart thing and decided that the potential danger outweighed the value of their friendship.

But Prompto stayed. And today—today he went beyond anything that could have been expected of him.

Noctis rereads Prompto’s texts several times, but he can’t figure out what to say. How to express his gratitude, how to convey his concern, how to apologize for it all. Everything he starts to type is inadequate, and he deletes it before he hits send. He decides to push that problem aside for a moment and switches over to Ignis’s messages.

Ignis’s texts are straightforward and informative, a timeline detailing his and Prompto’s progress through the afternoon and into the night. It’s both a relief and another thing to feel guilty over: despite his unhappiness, Ignis took good care of Prompto, just like he said he would. Noctis owes Ignis an apology, too, not just Gladio.

It’s the last text that breaks the pattern: _I daresay today’s events will provide some points in Prompto’s favor. When were you two going to say something?_

There’s a picture underneath of a piece of paper with a bunch of lines and words scribbled on it and taped to a wall. Noctis zooms in close so he can read it, and his stomach drops when he makes sense of the handwritten chart.

Scrawled across the top in Prompto's bold, bulky strokes are the words _CROWNSGUARD ENTRANCE EXAM PROGRESS._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You can find me at [tumblr](http://audreyskdramablog.tumblr.com/) & [twitter](https://twitter.com/audreyskdrama) if you like.


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